When there is a clean surface, it is easy to make it become cluttered. “I’ll just put this away later,” you’ll think to yourself, but then later never comes. Clutter is like misery, it enjoys company, and pretty soon that clean surface has suddenly become a huge mess. Clutter is ultimately a sign of disorder. It robs everyone of time, cleanliness, and ultimately happiness.

Much of the advice to avoid clutter involves one of three basic commitments. Have you been told to de-clutter your life by one of these methods in the past?

Every time you enter a room, make sure to put one thing away.

Always remove the clutter from a surface you have cleaned to avoid more clutter.

Throw things away that do not have any value to them.

The problem is that these methods might help to remove the clutter from one room, but you’ll only have one room clean. The clutter will cycle from room to room, leaving you in an endless cycle of misery. Kondo changes the dynamic with this book by adjusting the perspective. Instead of looking at each room of the home, look at each category of clutter.

Your job isn’t to keep picking away at the piles of clutter that you have in an endless loop of time. Your job is to focus on one type of clutter, organize it, and then keep it organized. If you have paperwork for your business strewn about, take the time to file it and then file each additional bit of paperwork that comes your way. Once you’ve organized one category, you move onto the next category.

What Kondo suggests in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up really does work. Every client she has taken on is improving the clutter in their life. She claims a 0% lapse rate. In this book, she’s also ready to help you.

This book is ultimately about finding joy in the simple things of life. It’s all about the perspective of things. Are you keeping your socks all bundled up and tight, afraid of what lies ahead? Or are you keeping your socks folded and free, ready to happily embrace the changes that may be headed your way? When you care for your things, they’ll last longer and this will have more meaning to you.

The only problem is that we often care for things that have no meaning to us. There are things that we keep that don’t make us happy. These are the things that we must discard in order to choose happiness. Money won’t buy this happiness for us. It is a focus on real joy that can only come from being able to care for those things that hold the most meaning.

Initially intended for a Japanese audience, the zen of being free of clutter can apply to us all. There is a lot of good to take out of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Grab your copy today and choose happiness.

A new job doesn’t have to be within a different industry. Even a promotion that has you occupying a bigger office can be difficult when it is something you haven’t done before. If you’re about to take on a tough job, the butterflies in your gut can begin flying around at hurricane-force speeds. Here’s how you can make that transition into a new position a little easier.

#1. Look for what remains the same. Even if the new job has you completely changing the role you’ve held in a company for years, the new position is going to have some similarities to what you’ve done in the past. Look for these similarities and make them a primary part of your working day for the first couple of months in your new position. This will become your comfort zone and let you settle into the new job a little easier.

#2. Take on a mentor so you can ask questions. There is never a stupid question when you’re in a new position. Many people fail to ask questions because it would make them look bad in front of a new team. This is where having a mentor who can help you begin the onboarding process into a new position is highly beneficial. You can ask the mentor any question and you won’t feel embarrassed or look inexperienced. If there isn’t an onboarding policy where you’ve got this new job, then ask to create one.

#3. Always take some time for yourself. Whenever you begin a new position, the stress loads seem to be magnified for the first 6 months at the very minimum. It is extremely important that you take time for yourself every day so that you can always be at your best. You might need to work longer hours or perform at a different speed than you’re used to doing, so eating right, sleeping at night, and taking regular breaks will be incredibly important.

#4. Set small, achievable goals for every day. Feedback is one of the most critical components of starting a new job. Without an evaluation of your performance, you won’t really know where you stand in comparison to the expectations that others have of you. Make sure that you’re setting goals to hit every day and then have regular feedback every month [or even every week] to make sure you’re on the right path.

#5. Don’t get stuck. You’re responsible for your overall professional development. Relying on others to challenge you is a recipe that is certain to bring about a disaster. Make sure that you’re always looking for ways to enhance your skills, but don’t get stuck just worrying about yourself. If you find opportunities that can help your team or your entire organization, then take advantage of them so that everyone can win.

New jobs are tough because they require us to do different tasks within a different routine. By incorporating these specific methods into each day, you’ll find that the worrisome edge to that new job can be dulled just a bit.

There are many things that can be learned when searching for a job, like what types of positions suit you best and what aspects are important when it comes to a job. This is why you being responsible for your own job search is so vital; if you let others take the reins when it comes to this step, you might miss out on some important information and overall, you will be more lost and confused when it comes to the actual interview process itself.

Habit 2: Set a Goal

Along the job search, there are many things that can happen that can stray you off the right path. This is why it is so important to set a goal when it comes to seeking a job. Make sure that you tell yourself that you want to complete the job searching task by a certain date or time period. By setting this goal, you are telling yourself that you respect your job search and that you take it seriously and as a priority. Without a goal in tow, you job search could lag on for longer than is necessary.

Habit 3: Stay Focused

There are several things that could happen when you are searching for a job, family troubles or someone getting married or wonderful vacations that you have not taken yet could be on the horizon. The point is to not deviate from the job search at all and stay focused as much as possible. Looking for a job can be very stressful and this is why focus needs to be your top priority. The only way to complete a successful job search is to stay focused until your job search goal has been met.

Habit 4: Be Organized

There are many things that have to be noted and remembered and taken into consideration when searching for a job that is why being organized is such an important aspect in successfully finding a job. Stay organized by writing down every interview that you go on, every job that you apply to and even every person that you talk to. Write down what was said and the name of the person who said it complete with a date. When you look back on your notes, you will notice that the organizational aspect of everything will make your job search that much easier.

Habit 5: Be Good to Yourself

When searching for a job, you might get so focused that you forget to be good to yourself. Remember when you search for a job that you are the most important instrument for the job, so you need to be in tip-top condition. That means that you must get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, maybe learn yoga/meditation, and spend your downtime in nature. When you take care of yourself, you will notice your stress level going down and your overall outlook becoming more positive, which is vital to the success of getting a great job.

Habit 6: Never Give Up

At the end of the day, it can be difficult to get job that you like, even if you follow all of these habits religiously. The secret is to never give up! There are always new jobs on the horizon and new and interesting people to meet that might be your ticket to getting your dream job. Don’t give up on your search and don’t give up on yourself. If you told yourself that you are going to get a wonderful job, then stick to your goal and follow the habits until you do. Sooner or later, you will find yourself with a great job and it will be because you did not give up.

Are you struggling to find your creativity? Maybe you feel like life has hit a rut and you can’t get out of it? The 7 habits of highly creative people are the best way to make the changes in life that are necessary to find inspiration again. Incorporate these habits into your life and you will be amazed at how easy it can be to tap into your creative centers.

#1. Pursue meaningful things. Take a moment and think about the meaning behind the actions you’re about to take. Is the course you’re about to chart going to be meaningful to you in some way? People stay creative by pursuing things that are meaningful to them. If you love what you do, then you’ll want to do more.

#2. Create a routine to center yourself. Start a routine that prepares your mind for creativity. Make sure that your day is structured so that you’re always triggered to find more creativity on a consistent basis. If you have unexpected events happen to you, that’s fine – just find a trigger that will help you get back to that routine so you can get centered.

#3. Use your imagination. Creativity is a skill that must be practiced. Make sure that you have some downtime every day and use it to daydream. Creating a fantasy world requires creativity and this practice will inspire real-life creativity when your downtime is over. Keep a journal close in case you get an inspired idea while daydreaming so you don’t forget it.

#4. Do something new every day. Being in a routine is good, but being in the same routine is bad. You need new experiences in order to inspire new levels of creativity. For that reason, it is important to schedule in new experiences every day as part of your daily routine. Whether you choose a different restaurant, a new park to visit, or even new music to enjoy during the day, anything new can be a trigger for something great.

#5. Observe. One of the greatest ways that humans learn is by watching others. Observe how creative people trigger creativity and stay focused and then incorporate the best of what you see into what you do.

#6. Trust your gut. Your intuition gives your advice that you need every day. The only problem is that the average person doesn’t trust there gut instinct. The logical mind overrides the intuition and then creativity disappears. Being creative means learning to trust yourself in every way.

#7. Give yourself plenty of time. If something in your life feels broken, then don’t expect an immediate fix. It takes time for things to wear out and break down. It also takes time to get things fixed. Use the difficult experiences of life as fuel for your creative output. Anger, grief, and sorrow not only inspire creativity, but truly experiencing these difficult emotions can help people cope with them and experience contentment in the near future.

Highly creative people don’t look backwards. They keep moving forward because there are new experiences behind every door. Find the experiences that are awaiting you today by incorporating these 7 unique habits.

There’s a definite difference between being busy and being productive. Some people are busy all of the time, but they aren’t very productive with their work. Then there are the people who can get a ridiculous amount of work done every day with a consistent, high quality. The difference is organization. You can be productive and busy by taking these six methods into consideration as you structure your day.

#1. Give yourself daily deadlines. If you set timers for yourself throughout your day, then you’ll be able to track the levels of productivity that you’ve been able to accomplish. It doesn’t have to be a tangible system. If you keep track of work levels in your head per hour, that’s just as good sometimes as having deadlines put into your calendars.

#2. Keep a daily checklist. If you keep forgetting to get something done on a daily basis, then it really does become difficult to achieve your full attention. A daily checklist should have all the chores that need to be done during the day, but also include weekly and monthly tasks on it as well. This will allow you to prioritize your day and increase the amount of work you get done because there is less task switching.

#3. Eliminate all of the distractions. You don’t have to answer every email or text message when it comes in. You don’t need to update your Facebook status this instant. If you have to stop every few minutes because you’re switching tasks, then you could find yourself falling far behind because communication, not work completion, has become your highest priority.

#4. Keep track of your most creative ideas. There are some amazing ideas that have transformed the world that seem so simple, we wonder why we couldn’t have thought of them. Maybe you already have. If you keep track of your ideas that you can’t turn into projects right now, then maybe you can use them later in the future. Ideas that don’t get written down will be ideas that are lost. Your memory is not generally as reliable as you think it would be.

#5. Mentorship is a key component of productivity. The people who train you and encourage you have a surprising amount of influence in how you work. People are a lot like sponges. They soak up bits and pieces of the people around them to make a unique identity. If you have mentors who are encouraging bad habits like always checking email or wandering around the office with coffee in hand, then you’ll be less productive than you could be.

#6. Emotions will stab you in the back. Your feelings are important, but feelings that fester create an environment that emphasizes a lack of productivity. If you’re frustrated about something, then take 2 minutes to cope and then come back to a project. If you’re tired and feel like procrastinating, then take a deep breath, give yourself a minute or two of attention, and then knuckle down to get the job done. Barely keeping your head above water with work is no way to survive.

Being productive on a consistent basis at work takes some effort, but it is a habit that will eventually pay off in many different ways. Incorporate these ideas into your daily routine and you might just be amazed at how efficient you can really be.